RAIL users face more chaos next summer when a 50-mile stretch of the Manchester-London line is shut for four months.

The track between Cheadle Hulme and Stafford is closing to speed up improvements for new 125mph tilting trains.

The plan will knock two years off the length of the project, which would otherwise take until 2006 working at night and weekends.

But travellers from Manchester and Stockport will escape the worst of the disruption, because their trains will be diverted via Wilmslow and Crewe.

The plan is the result of months of talks between the government's Strategic Rail Authority, Railtrack, and train operators, including Virgin.

The SRA is also talking to Virgin and Derby-based Midland Mainline about running extra trains to London from Manchester via Sheffield during the work.

It will mean that no Virgin trains will call at Macclesfield and Stoke next summer, but there will be local services and coaches to link with the intercity service.

Then before the end of 2003, engineers will move on to the Crewe-Manchester section and upgrade that, while trains are switched to the Macclesfield-Stoke line. Passengers from Wilmslow will have to go to Stockport or Stafford.

SRA chairman Richard Bowker pledged that there would be no more changes to the programme. He said: "This is it. This is what we have all worked on over the past few months".

While the line will be blocked completely for seven days a week, services from Manchester and Stockport to London will be diverted via Wilmslow. At the moment, that journey is six minutes longer than the route via Macclesfield, but the extra trains using the lines will probably make it slower.

But Mr Bowker promised 125mph and 'substantial' cuts in the journey times to London by September 2004.

He said: "When completed, this massive engineering programme will bring the West Coast line up to the standard, in terms of capacity and line speed, required of a 21st century high speed rail link.

"The work will get finished two years earlier. All parties are determined to see the project through with the least possible inconvenience to passengers and freight".

Up to this Christmas, the line is closing every weekend between Hemel Hempstead and Milton Keynes, adding up to an hour and a half to journeys while passengers are bussed between the two stations.

Railtrack Chief Executive John Armitt said: "Building the West Coast has proved a monumental task in terms of keeping the route open and upgrading it at the same time.

"However, we have to accept that four hour slots at night and total weekend closures and odd bank holidays were not allowing the work to be done efficiently or quickly and were leaving the real benefits stuck in the sidings".

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling defended the plans. He said the move would save money and allow 125mph tilting trains to be used two years earlier than expected.

"The advantage of closing sections of the line - it's not the whole of the line - is that it will enable us to do the work more cheaply, because it's very expensive to have a series of very short stoppages,'' said Mr Darling.

He said the West Coast Main Line had needed investment for up to 40 years. He said they were now getting control of the massive costs of the proposed modernisation. Mr Darling admitted that four or five years ago no one knew the scale of the problem on the railways.

"But if you look at the facts, we have got more people on the railways since five years ago, we have halted the decline in bus patronage - those are encouraging signs, though we've got a lot more to do.''